Soil organic matter quantity and quality shape microbial community compositions of subtropical broadleaved forests

As two major forest types in the subtropics, broadleaved evergreen and broadleaved deciduous forests have long interested ecologists. However, little is known about their belowground ecosystems despite their ecological importance in driving biogeochemical cycling. Here, we used Illumina MiSeq sequencing targeting 16S rRNA gene and a microarray named GeoChip targeting functional genes to analyse microbial communities in broadleaved evergreen and deciduous forest soils of Shennongjia Mountain of Central China, a region known as ‘The Oriental Botanic Garden’ for its extraordinarily rich biodiversity. We observed higher plant diversity and relatively richer nutrients in the broadleaved evergreen forest than the deciduous forest. In odds to our expectation that plant communities shaped soil microbial communities, we found that soil organic matter quantity and quality, but not plant community parameters, were the best predictors of microbial communities. Actinobacteria, a copiotrophic phylum,...